Logistics across the Functional Areas & Logistics Considerations in System Life Cycle

The manufacturing sector/industry, faced with the challenges of producing quality products and distributing the same to customers in rapid response to their needs, in order to retain and add up its customer base/target market, has to bear additional responsibilities in the current scenario that extend to continuously and effectively provide maintenance & support to the product after the transfer of ownership. These challenges entail additional resources and infrastructure at a time when almost all manufacturing units are going through a resource constrained environment. Logistics, in such a delicate situation, has gained importance as a support function providing effective and economical support for the manufacturing system in all phases of its life cycle. The objective of this paper is to manifest and elucidate the role and activities of logistics in proper perspective i.e. as a support function having interfaces with other functional areas as well as the environment (markets/suppliers). Towards the end of furnishing support to the firm in an effective and efficient manner, there is a need for a systematic approach for planning, development, implementation and evaluation of a Logistic Function together with its integration with other functional areas. A generalized approach to incorporate logistic considerations right from the concept exploration/conceptual design phase to the system’s retirement with the objective of minimizing the life cycle cost of the system is discussed.